Heilongjiang is the earliest province in China to see the dawn and sunset. The unique geographical location makes the province a fairy-tale kingdom: green spring, cool summer, colorful autumn, and crystal winter. The Heilongjiang Garden of the Beijing Expo 2019 will be built on the idea of Middle East Railway and packed with natural and cultural landscapes. Chinese and foreign tourists can follow the flowery Bright Longjiang Road, stroll in the primitive forests, call upon frontier posts, experience colorful tree houses, and enjoy fishing boat songs. The undulating woodland landscape and flowery rail foot paths are blended to form a colorful scroll of spring flowers, summer grasses, autumnal colors and wintry features.
The Heilongjiang Garden is located in National Garden Zone to the west of the main entrance of the Expo. It covers an area of about 2,000 square meters. The beautiful circular foot path runs through the entire Heilongjiang Garden. At the entrance is a frontier post station, which draws on the elements of the Old Railway Station in Harbin. The Garden combines vertical greening and metal components and creates a new Middle East Railway with abundant flowers and colors, which is a reference to the beginning of the new journey of Heilongjiang. Along with a small forest train winding through a dense forest, visitors stroll through the undulating terrain and explore forest tree houses and villas that are the symbols of a frontier station.
Farther along, colorful tree houses constructed with Heilongjiang’s wood skeletons and nomadic dwellings as a prototype show the green living environment of Xiaoxing’anling (Lesser Khingan Mountains). The morning sun pours down from the roof, creating a bright and natural interior that displays the relaxing, tranquil life in a forest. Wooden structures highlight the local customs of using natural building materials and icicle-patterned surfaces symbolize the coldness that characterizes the province in the winter. Two small tree houses in the background forest are home to birds there. The small tree houses are at the highest point of the Garden. Faint lights at night radiate from the tree houses, like a lighthouse in night sailing, adding light and warmth to the Garden.
Walking out of the forest, the visitor will feast on Wusuli River Boat Songs that focus on fishing hunting by the Hezhe people and on an urban story about happy life on river, called “Fishing Boat Songs.” White metal structures capture the moment when the Hezhe fishermen are fishing in the Wusuli River. The fishing nets display the enthusiasm and leisure of the people of Heilongjiang, as if they could hear the fishermen's joyful songs from a distance.
“As one of the most livable areas in China, Heilongjiang builds its Garden based on the forest of Xiaoxing’anling. The Garden combines the most beautiful natural spaces with cultural stories to showcase the distinctive regional characteristics of our province,” said designer Wei Jiayu, “The Garden will speak a natural,easy-to-understand language so that the tourists from all over the world can deeply remember the ecological, green, cool, fairy-tale Heilongjiang. ”
